Kenya

2013

News coverage of the Kenyan Parliament
elected in March 2013 is off to a rocky start. The press last week was kicked
out of the media center in the National Assembly, and although the speaker
tried to make assurances that overall access won't be affected, journalists are
wary.

The Pan African Parliament's (PAP) launch of a media freedom
campaign through a "Dialogue on Media Freedom in Africa" in mid-May marks an
important and welcome starting point. For too long, media freedom has been
divorced from the debate around development and democratization when it has an
integral role to play in promoting transparency, underpinning good governance,
and enabling citizens to make informed decisions.

The working environment for journalists and
media workers in Kenya is increasingly hostile, with at least 91 percent of
journalists at local media outlets having faced security threats in the course
of their work, a new study has revealed. The harassment of and attacks against journalists,
with nearly 40 percent coming from politicians, indicates a need for urgent
attention from both state and non-state actors if press freedom is to be
guaranteed in the country.

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Nairobi, April 19,
2013--Two investigative journalists have reported receiving death threats
in Kenya shortly after airing a story suggesting foul play in a government
official's death, according to news reports and local journalists.

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Nairobi, April 1, 2013--A
correspondent for The Star daily newspaper
was found dead Sunday morning in his house in the coastal city of Mombasa,
local journalists told CPJ. A housemate found reporter Bernard Wesonga with
blood on his nose and mouth at around 11:30 a.m., StarDeputy Editor Charles Kerich said.

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Kenya has passed peacefully through its
election period, but questions still hang over the legitimacy of presidential
candidate Uhuru Kenyatta's victory--as well as over the future of the country's
media coverage. During polling, challenges arose for both local and
international media, and they have not subsided. For the foreign press, it is
now unclear how to get accreditation to report in the country. Local journalists
are worried about the rise of self-censorship, and freedom of expression
advocates are concerned by plans for vague regulations on hate speech.

Amid a tense presidential election, Kenyans have avoided a
repeat of the deadly violence that followed the vote in 2007, when half a
million people were uprooted and more than 1,000 people were killed. Still, the
situation today is fraught. Ethnic identity dominates the nation's political
divisions--and those same loyalties can undermine solidarity in the press corps.

Journalists could be seen rushing from
polling station to polling station Monday to see long queues of determined
Kenyan voters in what was apparently a largely peaceful election, according to
the Deputy Director of Kenya's statutory media council, Victor Bwire. But
leading up to the vote, many journalists worked in a climate of fear; and many
of them say they are still wary that, once results are in, they will face
attacks and other challenges such as they experienced in the aftermath of the
last presidential election in 2007.

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Election-related violence is a worry for
journalists in many countries, but perhaps nowhere more so than Kenya, where presidential
polls will be held March 4. In the aftermath of the nation's last presidential
elections in 2007, over one thousand people were killed in ethnic and political
violence, live news broadcasts were banned, and the press faced a torrent of
threats, leading to widespread self-censorship. Already, in recent weeks, some journalists
have been harassed and their equipment confiscated, while media houses have
been threatened in relation to coverage.